These days you can smell the alcohol on their breath--
Maybe it's because we're coming to the end
(she said)
Where the poets gather to discuss
The empty axis where the temperate zones
and equatorial zones
and polar caps and rainforest zones
the Mojave desert and the Himalayan mountains used to spin.
These days the poets are spending days working in their cars--
Cars which haven't been taken care of
like parts or
else they work with illustrators
trying to publish children's books with pictures of cars
and beards. Lewis Carroll or Milne-like verse
Thirty-three sections in each
And stumbling through the cross pages
like slow wavering trills of a guitar
they undress themselves--
cast aside their
jeans, t-shirts, socks, scarves, hats, pants, glasses (especially those)
and dead-drunk leaning on a lamppost
the poets kiss everyone and lose face again
and they go home. It's probably just the malt-liquor.
I think that I shall have another
drink
It's already been 18 days in a row of insobriety
That I've thrown myself
into the bottle and tried to shatter
the inside (she said) we're not still in the bottle?